Ukraine has received the bodies of 909 fallen soldiers in the second such repatriation in the space of three weeks, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said Friday, April 18.
The operation was carried out with the assistance of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to the headquarters.
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The bodies were returned from several frontline areas, including Kurakhove, Pokrovsk, Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Sumy. Some were also repatriated from morgues in Russian-held territory.
The operation involved joint efforts of multiple Ukrainian institutions, including the Coordination Headquarters, the Security Service, the Armed Forces, the Interior Ministry, the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, and the State Emergency Service.
“Special thanks to the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who transport the repatriated fallen heroes and coordinate their handover to law enforcement and medical authorities,” the headquarters said.
Authorities said law enforcement and forensic experts will begin the process of identifying the remains.
Friday’s repatriation is at least the eighth involving 500 or more Ukrainian bodies since last October. A similar return of 909 bodies was on March 28.
Russia does not announce the return of its bodies or give up-to-date information on the numbers of its troops killed fighting in Ukraine.
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In mid-February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told US broadcaster NBC News that more than 46,000 of his soldiers had been killed and some 380,000 wounded.
Russia has not updated its official casualty figures since the fall of 2022, when it reported fewer than 6,000 soldiers killed.
However, an ongoing investigation by Mediazona and BBC News Russian has verified the identities of approximately 100,000 Russian soldiers killed since the start of the war, using publicly available data.
AFU Junior Sgt. Stanislav Bunyatov, call sign “Osman,” previously said Russia has returned more bodies to Ukraine than vice versa, explaining that many Ukrainian soldiers have died in areas now under Russian control due to ongoing retreats along parts of the front line.
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